Forty-seven percent of U.S. adults are worried they won’t be able to afford necessary health care in the coming year, the highest level of concern recorded since West Health and Gallup began tracking the measure in 2021.
Americans face growing challenges to their health and financial wellbeing, according to the inaugural report, State of the States 2025: Insights on Healthcare in America, The report finds that while negative health care experiences are widespread in the United States, they differ significantly depending on where people live.
The new study of nearly 20,000 Americans offers a comprehensive picture of health care across all 50 states and the District of Columbia ,uncovering differences in how Americans across the nation experience health care in terms of cost, quality, and access.
For example, Iowa and Massachusetts topped the charts for overall health care experience, ranking among the top 10 states for health care cost, quality, and access. However, Alaska, Arkansas, and Texas consistently showed poor performance across all areas.
According to the report, residents in the 10 top-ranked states are less likely than those in the 10 bottom-ranked to forgo recommended care or forego prescriptions due to costs. But they are more likely to report high-quality proactive care from providers and fewer barriers ro accessing health care services, such as finding providers and transportation.
Other key findings:
- Nationally, about one in five adults (20 percent) report that someone in their household was unable to afford a prescription in the past three months. In Mississippi, this percentage is 36 percent, three times the rate in Iowa (12 percent).
- Thirty percent of U.S. adults say a household member skipped medical treatment due to cost. In Massachusetts, that share is 18 percent, less than half the rate reported in Mississippi (46 percent).
- Seventy-one percent of adults say their health care provider ensures they receive all recommended screenings and evaluations. That rate climbs to 78 percent in Massachusetts and Rhode Island but drops to 59 percent in Oregon and Wyoming.
- Twenty-five percent of U.S. adults say not knowing how to find a provider delayed or prevented care, and that number is 14 percent in Iowa but is as high as 36 percent in New Mexico.
- Long wait times for appointments were the most commonly reported barrier nationwide, preventing or delaying health care access for 53 percent of Americans overall. In Vermont, more than two-thirds of residents (72 percent) cite this issue, compared with j46 percent in Nebraska, the top-ranked state.